I read the label of the little brown bottle on the placemat three times in the bathroom, with the water running to cover my voice. Patricia Lindell. My own name, my own address, a drugstore in Pierre I had never entered, and the prescriber, Dr. Gerald Ames. A strong sedative, taken at night, that would leave any person muddled and unsteady by morning. I had never been given that prescription. I had never been to Dr. Ames. After forty years in a white coat, I knew exactly what such a bottle was for. It was not for the person whose name was printed on the front.
Martin stayed on the line while I sat on the closed lid of the toilet. He spoke the way he did in court, evenly, one fact after another. The power of attorney had been filed on Tuesday. It was supported by a letter from Dr. Ames stating that I was showing early signs of dementia, a letter written without a single appointment. Grant and Darlene had a hearing set for Monday. “Patricia, do not eat or drink anything that does not come from your own hand,” Martin said. “I am calling a sergeant I know. I am getting in my car.” I said, “Martin, it is Thanksgiving.” He said, “Then it will be a short drive.”
I washed my face and went back to the dining room, and I sat down at the card table as if nothing had happened. Jay looked up at me from his turkey, with the clip on tie crooked, and I smiled and winked. He winked back with both eyes. At the big table, Darlene was making her way around with a silver coffee pot, filling the cups one by one, and she stopped at my elbow with a special cup on a saucer. “Patricia, I made yours decaf,” she said sweetly. “For your heart.” I looked at the steam rising. I did not pick it up.
A crayon drawing by a child on a paper placemat gave one pharmacist the evening to bring her daughter back from a plan to make her forget.
I stood up with the placemat in my hand and my voice came out in the tone I had used at the pharmacy counter for forty years. “Everyone, my name is Patricia Lindell,” I said. “I was a pharmacist for four decades, and my memory is perfectly good. I know every name at this table. Grant, Darlene, Doctor Ames. I have a few terms. That cup stays exactly where it is. Nobody leaves this room. And in about ten minutes, my lawyer will be here with a sergeant of the Rapid City police.” Sixteen people froze with their forks in the air. Grant half rose, his napkin falling off his lap.
The mother of Jay, a nurse named Tanya, who was the sister of Grant, had put down her glass. She looked at her son, who sat swinging his feet and coloring a turkey. Then she looked at the placemat in my hand, and she read the small letters Jay had copied so carefully. “Mom, Jay told me this morning that he saw you and Grant in the kitchen,” she said, white faced, to Darlene. “He said you were putting something in a cup. I told him he was imagining things.” She put her hands over her mouth. “Oh God. I told my son he was imagining things.”
Darlene lunged. She was across the carpet in three strides, in her gold blouse, and her hand closed on the cup of coffee and then on the placemat, and she tore at it, to rip it in two. But Tanya was faster. She stepped between us, with her arms spread, and took the wrist of her own mother in law in a nurse grip that Darlene could not break. “Do not touch that,” Tanya said. “Do not touch the drawing of my son, and do not touch this woman.” The placemat survived with one corner torn. The cup fell and rolled across the carpet, and the coffee soaked in, dark and silent.
Kelsey had not moved from her chair. She sat with her hand over her mouth, her mascara beginning to run. When the sergeant and Martin came through the door, with their cold air and their quiet voices, she began to cry in great, helpless sobs, like a child. I crossed the room and knelt by her chair, with my pacemaker thumping. “Mom, I rolled my eyes,” she choked. “I told you to just go with it. I was afraid of him, and of Darlene, and I told myself it was only a dinner.” I took her wet face in my hands. “Kelsey, I know,” I said. “But you chose me tonight, and that is enough.”
The money consequences came swiftly. The judge threw out the power of attorney on Monday morning, and the state board of medical examiners opened a case against Dr. Ames, who surrendered his license within the month. Grant and Darlene were charged with conspiracy and attempted exploitation of an elder, and Grant pleaded guilty. Kelsey filed for a divorce, and sold the house by the airport, and from the sale I received back the hundred twenty thousand dollars, which I placed in a trust in the name of Neil. Kelsey moved into my guest room, then a little apartment, and enrolled in night classes.
In the name of my husband, Neil, who passed in 2019 and who believed that a pharmacist must read the label twice, I started the Second Label Fund. It pays for medication reviews, legal help and counseling for older adults in Pennington, Custer and Meade counties who are being pushed toward guardianship they do not need. In the first year, we helped thirty seven people. A woman of eighty, in a gold cross necklace, sat in the office and said, “My son says my memory is going.” I asked to see her pill bottles, and we went through them, one by one.
The next Thanksgiving, I held the dinner at my own house. I set a table for eleven, with the good china, and I put a name card for Jay at the place on my right. He arrived in his clip on tie, carrying a box of crayons. I framed the placemat, torn corner and all, and hung it in the front hall, above the telephone. Jay stood in front of it for a long time, with his head tilted. “Grandma Patricia,” he said, “do you still like to draw?” I took out a pad. I picked a crayon. I said, “Yes, sweetheart. Show me how.”